Water settlement knots finally untangling

Five tribes, two agencies conquering river issues

Standing alongside the Escondido Canal on the edge of Hellhole Canyon a few weeks ago, Bo Mazzetti, vice chairman of the Rincon Indian band, could see the outlines of his reservation miles away.

The boundary was easy to spot. On one side, green avocado trees. On the other, the Indian side, brown chaparral. The reason for the difference? The water that flows through the canal at his feet, he said.

The canal was built with federal approval more than 100 years ago to divert water from the San Luis Rey River and deliver it to Escondido. The Indian tribes downstream lost an important source of water.

The federal government's decision was a mistake and it has taken decades of litigation, legislation and negotiation to correct it.

Although a solution was trumpeted years ago, it appears that the sides finally have untangled all of the legal knots.

The La Jolla, Pala, Pauma, Rincon and San Pasqual Indian bands, plus Escondido and the Vista Irrigation District, have figured out how to exchange water from the San Luis Rey for Colorado River water.

They've determined how to make sure the city and the Vista district can continue operating their water systems without major changes.

And they've dealt with side issues such as abandoning a defunct hydropower plant on the Rincon reservation and covering up the canal through the San Pasqual reservation to prevent drownings.

“We're closer than we've ever been before,” said Robert Pelcyger, a lawyer for the San Luis Rey River Indian Water Authority, which represents the five tribes.

Emphasis on settlement
Escondido Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler said a settlement is key. “If we don't work it out, we lose our local water,” she said.

Depending on the weather, the city gets 15 to 35 percent of its water from the San Luis Rey and buys the rest from far away through the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

The federal government's misstep long ago was that in establishing the reservations, it had agreed not only to set land aside for the Indians, but also, by implication, the water in the river. The water shouldn't have been diverted.

The federal government finally admitted its error in 1988 – nearly 20 years after the tribes sued.

And now, 20 years after that, the parties say they have a plan that works for everyone.

Escondido and the Vista district will pay market rates for any water the tribes don't use, now about $500 an acre-foot. That money can only be used for economic development.

The agreement also opens up the possibility of a pipeline roughly paralleling the river to bring new water to the Pauma Valley. The pipeline would be shared by the tribes and the Yuima Municipal Water District.

Fed agencies must approve
The parties are just waiting for approval from the federal government – the Departments of Interior, Justice and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

It's not just the complications inherent in combining Indian law and water law that have caused a 40-year delay in resolving a 1969 lawsuit – it's that some problems simply weren't solved.

The San Luis Rey River flowed freely down the Pauma Valley when many of North County's Indian reservations were established in 1891.

“There was enough water every year for those who wanted to farm,” said Leo Calac, a Rincon elder whose grandfather grew crops. “The riverbed was full of sycamores and willows. . . . The old-timers say in Pauma Valley that steelhead used to come up from Oceanside.”

In 1895, with the approval the federal government, the river was dammed at the La Jolla reservation, its water diverted via the canal to Lake Wohlford and eventually to orange trees, avocado groves and homes and businesses in Escondido.

The free flow downstream stopped, and with it a way of life. “The turtles for rattles, they were all gone when the water went away,” Calac said.

In 1922, William Henshaw, owner of the Warner Ranch, got a permit from the federal government to dam the river 9 miles upstream from the dam on the La Jolla reservation and create the lake that bears his name.

The Vista Irrigation District eventually bought the lake and the wells that fill it. Its water flows down the river, through the Escondido canal and then to a flume to Vista.

Tribes sue in 1969
Then, in 1969, the tribes joined together and sued.

For more than a decade, the battle was fought in the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Decisions by judges in the early 1980s voided parts of the contracts Escondido and the Vista district had used to divert the river.

Faced with a nearly endless battle, U.S. Rep. Ron Packard, the Republican who represented the region, brought the sides together and, in 1988, pushed a solution into law.

The federal government would give the Indians 16,000 acre-feet of water and pay $30 million for the decades the river was unjustly diverted. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, or enough for two families for a year.

The money was the easy part. It's been collecting interest and is now more than $60 million and can only be used for water projects.

But getting the water was another matter in the American West, where every drop is seemingly allocated among thirsty regions.

“Water is gold in California, and you can't ask people to give away some of their water,” said Packard, who retired from Congress in 2001 but has continued working on the water settlement.

Finally, in 2003, another deal and a breakthrough.

The tribes would get the first 16,000 acre-feet of water saved lining the All-American and Coachella canals in the Imperial Valley. San Diego would get the rest of the 100,000 or so acre-feet that no longer seeps into the ground because of the concrete lining.

Since then, the tribes, Escondido and the Vista district have been working to figure out exactly how to get that water from the Colorado River.

Among those working on the settlement was David Chapman, a former Escondido city attorney, who spent much of his career on the litigation.

He noted it touches on water, power, the Colorado River, pioneers, Indians and the power of the federal government.